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Sunday, October 28, 2012

I spent all my time making a Halloween costume this weekend, so here is a cheerful Halloween greeting doodle that I made some years ago.

And some pictures of my Halloween costume which happens to be freaking awesome.

I am a gargoyle in case you are wondering.
And yes I made it.
And no I have not finished a draft of my thesis, why do you ask?

Unfortunately, after putting quite a while into making this mask, I discovered that there is actually nothing interesting to do as a gargoyle.
MASSIVE COSTUME OVERSIGHT.
Gargoyles are stone. They just sit there, being cool, way way up high on ledges of cool buildings.
But there weren't any ledges to perch on at the Halloween dance.
And also I am afraid of heights anyway so I would probably be unwilling to perch on them.
So I stood around like a dull boring rock.

When I tried to do anything I just ended up looking stupid like this:

I think I would have had more fun being a mime with Max (a mime cuss it!!!). I did win the individual costume competition, but I think that Max had more fun, even though I stole his imaginary rope out of spite.
Also some one suggested that I should have a pigeon, why did I not think of that? How come I never have good ideas?

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Pumpkins are an important part of Halloween.Unfortunately for them.
They are an important part of Halloween the way that turkeys are an important part of thanksgiving, and pinatas are an important part of birthday parties.
It would not be the best to be a pinata.

But today is not pity a pinata day here at seize the absurd,
no it is pity a pumpkin day.
Or it could be pity things beginning with the letter "p" day, poor Peter Pettigrew.

However the suffering of a pumpkin can at times be very beneficial to private ambitions. For example if one carved the following message into one of them:

Family : "its weird that no one is coming to our door."
Me: "yes that is in fact very strange. I suppose I will eat all the candy then."
then proceed to eat all of the candy yourself and pass out in a sugar coma of glory.

And that concludes a slightly depressing message about pumpkins and pinatas, however I am going to bet that before today you never said to yourself "thank goodness I am not a pumpkin or a pinata"
You're welcome.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

I know its supposed to be Octoberween
but I had an outburst of fury during our last seminar, which took up three
pages of my seminar notebook and was sufficient to distract me from anything
that was said in class, which was good, because I was livid and I may or may
not have been close to having a full-scale emotional melt down and throwing my
chair through the window.

Anyway I wrote this during class and I thought I
would share it with you.

For the sake of context, here it is: we
are reading the works of Hegel for class, he is an unintelligible German
philosopher. Well, unintelligible to me anyway a few people seem to understand
it because they have a muse for German nonsense or something.

Here
are my seminar notes since they are extremely stream of consciousness I have
attempted to give a play-by-play of them in italics:

I
began with an odd moment of self-reflection…probably because we kept talking
about self-consciousness and I was mainly conscious of being irate.

Whenever
I am not capable of understanding something I get uproariously angry and throw
a hissy fit. Three weeks of Hegel readings that I don’t understand has pushed
me off the deep end.

Other humble people are like, “I don’t understand this,
but its ok, I can still have an open mind”

Me: “I have no idea what this is saying.
Therefore it is stupid and wrong.”

Which leads me to the following
conclusion: People who think they are smart, are handicapping themselves with
respect to actually being smart.

One might ask: Liz how did you become
such an arrogant twit?

Well, self-confidence is considered a
virtue. Sometimes.

Self-confidence is a virtue that I did
not come by naturally (this became evident in high school where I spewed a
toxic river of self-deprecating humor). So I set out to construct an artificial
self-confidence, which I based on my bright and shiny intellect.

Today
as I sit in this Hegel seminar, not understanding a word anyone is saying, I
find myself wishing that I had a time machine. I would go tell myself, “listen,
don’t put all your eggs in that intelligence basket, you’re just not that
smart.”

And previous me would say, “I don’t have any
eggs, or baskets... and I wouldn’t take your advice even if I did.”

After
that period of soul searching I proceeded to draw an angsty cartoon, which went like this:

(note this endless spiral of screaming insanity)

More
whining:

In high school people would tell me
things like, “hey I really like your cartoons! You should do that for a living,”

And I would respond, “No. no one will
like them. I think I will be a smart person. Maybe a Professor.”

8 years of higher education later, and
now I am saying, “turns out I am not good at being smart either I think I will
draw cartoons”

A return
to a commentary on the misery of seminar and some sort of self-help guide to Hegelian
depression:

No amount of tea could restore my
emotional state.

How to help your friends who are
depressed by Hegel:

Telling them that Hegel is awesome = the
worst plan ever. You: “no Hegel is great and really makes a lot of sense if you
kind think about it sideways.” Depressed friend:“I can’t think sideways.” Result: depressed
friend tries to murder you.

Compliments = not helpful, “no! you’re
smart!” … no really I have just have had a frickton of evidence that I am in
fact not smart. I don’t believe you or your compliments.

Sympathy cards = acceptable, they should
say things like “sorry for the loss of your intellect” and “during our senior
year my mind leapt into a black abyss of despair just like yours, I believe
that with the help of bourbon milkshakes you can make it through this trying
time” these are helpful statements.

Monday, October 8, 2012

Halloween is my favorite holiday. This
is occasionally a source of contention.

OTHER PEOPLE: No. Really your favorite
holiday is Christmas.

Presents? Christmas cheer? spiked
apple cider?

ME: No it isn't.

OTHER PEOPLE: Fine. Then your favorite
holiday has to be your birthday.

Its all about you, how could that
not be great?

There's cake, and in your case
tequila.

ME: Nope.

BEST FRIEND: No really Other
People, it is Halloween. She's not even joking.

If you asked me to list some months it
would probably end up like this:

...July

August

September

Halloween

November

December...

In celebration of my love for
Halloween, Seize the Absurd will be Halloween themed throughout
October. I have decided to call this:

AN
OCTOBERWEEN EXTRAVAGANZA

beginning
today with coverage on a Monster Halloween Party, attended by the most famous monsters in history. Luckily the paparazzi have
acquired several promisingly dramatic snapshots.

Adam and his recently reconstructed
bride share a pleasant conversation with the Wicked witch.

The Witch serves a marvelous
pumpkin-eyeball punch to the fearsome guests.

(Frankenstein is the doctor, Adam is
the monster. Which is easy to remember because it makes perfect
sense, since he is the first re-created man....you're all welcome
very much.)

Medusa has chosen a lovely albino boa
constrictor named Reginald as a necklace. The necklace menaces the
waiter, who was attempting to serve shots of invisibility potion.

On the left is Chatty-Caty with her
fish bone tattoo.

The Mummy, who is intent on impressing
the ladies, has failed to notice that his bandages have slipped,
exposing some rather unattractive decaying leg.

Mer-woman and the Magic Rabbit are
unimpressed.

It seems that the cause of Mummy's
unraveling bandages, is a devious vampire, who has nailed a loose end
to the floor. Count Vladimir gives him a scathing look as he drinks a
bloody Mary (complete with eyeball instead of olive).

That was the last of the paparazzi
pictures acquired, it is believed that the photographer proceeded to
provoke a werewolf .